Valentyna Zhuk
Marketing Communications Manager
Co-author:
Peio Martin Elustondo
VP of Marketing at Anyline
The quarterly tire review opens on cost per mile by unit. One trailer stands out: a rear tire has, on paper, run twice as far as any other in the yard. That tire came off at a roadside stop in March. Its replacement went on, and nobody recorded its number.
Every mile since has gone to the old tire’s record. Your fleet management system (FMS) counted the miles correctly, because telematics reported them. It had no way to know which tire was on that wheel. Tire and vehicle IDs still reach the system through a person at the vehicle, and that step decides how far you can trust the rest.
What tire and vehicle data does a fleet management system need?
Every time a tire goes on or comes off, a fleet management system needs four facts: the tire, the vehicle, the wheel position, and the odometer reading. Tire modules in fleet maintenance software ask for exactly these. One package requires a unique tracking number for each tire and suggests branding your own numbers onto the tires.
What a tire record in your FMS needs, and where each fact comes from
| Fact | Where it is | How it usually reaches the FMS |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle | VIN on the windshield, door label or papers; license plate | Typed or picked from a list at handover, inspection or service |
| Odometer | Telematics unit on connected vehicles; dashboard | Automatic where a unit is fitted, typed elsewhere (see digital odometer capture for fleets) |
| Wheel position | Axle layout set up in the FMS | Picked from a list by the technician |
| Tire | DOT code on every tire; commercial tire ID on truck, bus and trailer tires | Typed from the sidewall, or a number the fleet brands on itself |
How do you identify individual truck tires in a fleet?
Use the commercial tire ID on the sidewall of truck, bus, and trailer tires. The DOT code cannot do this job, because it names a batch. NHTSA’s 2019 study on electronic tire identification spells out the rule. All tires of the same make, model, and size made in one plant in the same week share one tire identification number.
That matters more to a fleet than to a car owner. The Tire Industry Association told the same study that fleets buy tires in bulk and rarely track them to one truck or trailer. One order can put the same DOT code on a row of tractors, and a record keyed on that code cannot tell their tires apart.
Truck, bus, and trailer tires carry a second identifier for this job. Anyline calls it the commercial tire ID: 7 to 14 letters and digits on the sidewall, separate from the DOT code. Continental reads it with Anyline, alongside the license plate, to follow each tire’s lifecycle in commercial fleet management. Where a tire carries one, your FMS has a tracking number without branding your own.
Passenger car tires carry no commercial tire ID. A car fleet builds each tire record from the vehicle, the wheel position, and the date, as our guide to tire data collection explains.
How do VIN and license plate capture work with fleet management software?
The driver or technician points a phone at the VIN or the plate, and the app fills the vehicle field in your FMS. Anyline’s VIN capture reads all 17 characters from the windshield, the door label or a document. License plate recognition reads plates continuously as the camera passes them.
The VIN stays with a vehicle for life, which makes it the safer key for the asset record. A plate can change when the vehicle is re-registered, but it is the quicker read across a yard. Josh Renaud, founder of the fleet management app Jitter, puts it this way:
The common denominator in transportation is a VIN – all vehicles and trailers have them. A VIN is linked to all kinds of valuable information, so it is critical that it can be captured easily and accurately.
A read at each handover also proves the vehicle was there. EveryFleet captures the VIN at every pick-up and drop-off as proof of both.
Which tire and vehicle identification method should a fleet use?
The right method depends on where your vehicles pass a fixed reader and where they meet a person with a phone. Hand entry costs nothing to start. In the same NHTSA study, the Tire Industry Association estimated a 10 to 15 percent error rate for tire codes collected and typed by hand.
Tire and vehicle identification approaches for fleets
| Approach | What it reads | Where it wins | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hand entry | Anything a person can see | Low volumes, no setup | Small, dirty or inboard codes, and typing errors that surface months later |
| Fleet-branded numbers or labels | The fleet’s own number | A tire shop that marks every new tire on arrival | Every new tire needs the extra step before it is mounted |
| RFID tags in the tire | The tag ID, where the tire has one | Reads without line of sight, through dirt | Tires without a tag give nothing to read; needs a dedicated reader |
| Fixed readers at the gate | Plates or tags of every vehicle that passes | Every pass logged with nobody present | Only at that gate, and only what faces the reader |
| Phone camera reading the printed code (Anyline) | VIN, plate, DOT code, tire size, commercial tire ID | Wherever a driver or technician already stands at the vehicle | Someone has to be at the wheel; IDs on stickers have limited support; no tread reading on truck, bus or trailer tires |
What should you look for in a tire and vehicle scanning SDK?
Look for one SDK that reads the vehicle and the tire inside your own app, on the phones your team already carries. Each point below ends with a test to run on any vendor.
Vehicle and tire IDs from one integration
The SDK behind Anyline’s fleet management solutions reads the VIN, the plate, the DOT code, the tire size, and the commercial tire ID. A commercial tire ID reads in a fraction of a second. Ask any vendor to read a trailer VIN, a plate and a truck tire ID in one session of your own app.
Built for the phones in your fleet
Anyline runs natively on iOS and Android, with wrappers for React Native, Flutter, Cordova, and .NET MAUI. Ask each vendor for its iOS SDK and for a wrapper in the framework your app is built in.
Vehicle reads stay on the device
VIN and plate reads are processed on the phone and work offline, so a yard with no signal does not stop a handover. Each plate read returns a confidence score, and your app decides what to do with a low one. Ask any vendor where the image goes after a read.
Proven on fleets and at volume
Anyline reads plates with over 99% accuracy across more than 100 million scans a year. RPM built VIN capture into its driver app and plans for 750,000 reads a year. Ask any vendor for its accuracy figure and the volume behind it.
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Frequently asked questions
What does a fleet management system do?
Can two tires have the same DOT number?
What software is commonly used in fleet management?
About the Author
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Valentyna Zhuk
Marketing Communications Manager
Valentyna Zhuk is Marketing Communications Manager at Anyline, where she leads press and content communications for the company's AI products, with a primary focus on automotive. She works closely with Anyline's product team to explain how the technology works in practice for the businesses that use it, including tire retailers and dealerships. She brings nearly two decades of international brand and marketing leadership to the role. Her articles cover the practical use of AI in the automotive industry.
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Peio Martin Elustondo
VP of Marketing at Anyline
Peio Elustondo Martin is VP of Marketing at Anyline, where he leads brand and growth strategy for AI-powered tire inspection and vehicle identification. He joined Anyline in 2021, moved from growth marketing into the VP role, and now leads a team spanning brand, demand generation, content, design, and business development. He works closely with product and sales teams across the automotive, logistics, and energy industries. Peio focuses on positioning digital tire inspection as a business decision for tire manufacturers, dealership groups, tire retailers, and service operations. He represents Anyline at industry events across the US and Europe, including the SEMA Show, NADA Show, and Automechanika Frankfurt, where he presents TireBuddy, Anyline's AI-powered mobile tire inspection app.
